Late in Elton John’s terrific show at Staples Center on Tuesday, on what the 71-year-old performer has billed as the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, his final run of shows around the world, he paused to thank all the fans who’ve supported him throughout half a century on stage.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be sitting here 50 years later talking to you,” John said. “I’ve been incredibly lucky. Worked very hard, but I’ve been lucky too.”

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Fans cheer as Elton John performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John bows tot he crowd during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Fans watch as Elton John performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John thanks the crowd during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John flips his coattails as he performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John points to the crowd during his performance for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Elton John performs during the first of his numerous Southern California stops for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“I have had enough applause to last a thousand lifetimes, but I will remember you in my soul,” John said, prompting a lot more applause on a night filled with it throughout the 24 songs that logged nearly three hours on stage.

Read on for five points to stuck in the imagination long after the final chords went quiet.

1. Familiarity is fantastic

Listening to John play one ridiculously well-known hit song after another you realize how wonderful it is to know an artist’s catalog as well as you do for a performer like him. The hard-struck chords that kicked off the night? “Bennie and the Jets,” you know them and the drum beats of original drummer Nigel Olsson in your bones. The stinging guitar riff at the opening of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” which closed out the main set a few hours later? That’s Davey Johnstone, still his guitarist all these years after joining the band for 1972’s “Honky Chateau” album.

So yeah, sometimes you want to hear new songs or a new album, but with a career that boasts more than 50 singles that reached the Top 40 there’s a warmth in the familiar, especially if it’s not going to be around all that much longer.

2. But why retire?

John no longer sings at the high end of the range he once commanded. The falsetto chorus on “Crocodile Rock” on Tuesday was handed over to the audience as it has been for years. But his voice sounded as strong as I’ve heard it in concert over the last decade, rich and enveloping be it one of the ballads such as “Candle In The Wind” or “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” or a rocker like “The Bitch Is Back” and “I’m Still Standing.”

His piano playing remains a revelation. Where the single versions we all know were typically tightly crafted for radio play – he joked that he chopped off a verse of his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin’s lyrics to “Daniel” because he thought it was too long, only to later realize he’d made the song indecipherable – on stage on Tuesday he stretched things out, his ring-bejeweled fingers running up and down the keys on extended instrumental breaks in numbers such as “Levon” or “Rocket Man.”

If I had to bet, I suspect this long farewell tour won’t be the last we ever see of Elton on stage – it almost never is for other artists – but that he’ll spend more time on his other interests and his family and pop up from time to time in one-off or limited residencies here and there.

His justifiable pride in the work he’s done through the Elton John AIDS Foundation shined as he talked about recovering from a few decades of drug- and alcohol abuse in the ’90s, and realizing he hadn’t done as much as he wished he had to help raise awareness and funds for research on the disease in the previous decade. The song “Believe” followed with its simple message that “love is the cure for whatever ails us in this world,” as he said in the introduction.

He and his husband David Furnish also have two young sons, Zachary, 8, and Elijah, 5, with whom he surely wants to spend more time. Midway through the show he mentioned he’d FacetTimed with them earlier in the day, and they asked him to dedicate a song to their “Gaga-mother,” which is what you call your godmother when she’s Lady Gaga apparently. “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” was the song he played for Gaga, who a bit later could be spotted in the front row, ending a day that began with her Oscar nominations for “A Star Is Born” with her friend and fellow flashy-dressing piano-playing pal Elton.

John talked a lot more this time around than I recall him doing in past shows. Farewell may currently be the hardest word, but it made for entertaining interludes between songs. He talked about being a young songwriter with Taupin and how excited they were when they learned Aretha Franklin, with whom John shares a birth date, was covering “Border Song,” which arrived early in Tuesday’s set.

He talked about working with Taupin for 50 years, and described their typical method of collaboration while introducing “Indian Sunset,” a deep cut from 1971’s “Madman Across The Water” album.

“He gives me a piece of paper and I go into another room, and I read the title, and then I read the song,” John said. “And as I do a little movie comes into my mind because he’s such a wonderful storyteller.”

“Indian Sunset” was a big musical and mental movie, though, so John said he broke it into three parts, and while it was never a radio hit, despite its relative obscurity the bravura piano and percussion duet with percussionist Ray Cooper provided an unexpected highlight of the set.

As for the final surprise of the night, which I won’t fully spoil for those who’ve got tickets to shows yet to come, it came as he departed the stage, rising up to the video screen in what looked amusingly a lot like your granny’s stair-lift before carrying Elton beyond the screen and onto a heavenly yellow brick road. Bedazzle the stair-lift, Elton, give it some flash already!

5. The songs

You aren’t going to hear any “Lion King” songs here, this is a night to celebrate the rock side of John’s catalog, so just deal with it all you people I spotted on Facebook hoping for “Circle of Life” or “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.”

But you almost certainly will hear your favorite Elton John song, which for me might be “Daniel,” which made me sad for reasons I apparently never fully understood when it came on my AM clock radio every day in 1973. Wait, no, it was “Rocket Man,” same radio, one year earlier. Or “Your Song,” which opened the encore.

You get the point. By the time the whole crowd joined in on the choruses of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the song that wrapped up the night, you’d had your Elton experience. Whether it’s your first, your last, whether you’re catching the tour later this week or in September when it swings through Anaheim for two nights at Honda Center, you got to say farewell to an icon, at least for now, and that’s something very sweet indeed.

Elton John: Farewell Yellow Brick Road

When: Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019

Where: Staples Center, Los Angeles

Continues: Elton John also plays Staples Center on Wednesday, Jan. 23, Friday, Jan. 25, and Jan. 30. He plays the Forum in Inglewood on Feb. 1 and Feb. 2. He plays Pechanga Arena in San Diego on Jan. 29. And he returns to play Honda Center in Anaheim on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.